Building Is Easy. Deciding What to Build Is the Hard Part.
Writing code is the straightforward part.
Figuring out what’s worth building, that’s where most startups stumble.
We’ve seen founders with incredible tech end up stuck, not because their product didn’t work… but because it solved a problem nobody really cared about.
The best products don’t start with features, they start with pain.
Real pain. The kind users will pay to remove.
Before writing a single line of code, ask:
“Who is this for and what do they hate doing right now?”
If that answer isn’t painfully clear, the product might not be ready to exist yet.
How do you validate what to build next before investing serious time?
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Great point!
You validate through research.
Gather data, decipher patterns, and validate the pain paint(s).
Build the right solution accordingly.
In short, reverse engeneer.
The hardest part is selling what you've made. There's a saying: “The person who came up with the idea made $1, the person who made it made $10, and the person who sold it made $100.” The idea itself is essentially worthless, but you can sell anything. It's just easier to sell a product that people really need than one they don't need.
It's true. Changing behaviours is hard! Especially when there's always some kind of cost involved in for a user. Founders also feed on 'conviction' that the problem is real in order to get through the hard yards, but sometimes this puts them at odds with reality.
So true. Code is easy, clarity is hard. I validate by talking to users until their pain sounds like a broken record, that’s when I know it’s worth building.
i disagre
Totally agree — the hardest part isn’t coding, it’s solving the right problem. Early validation saves so much time. A good example of user-focused building is
, built around what people actually search for.
This is a great distillation of the 'build vs. solve' mindset. You are absolutely correct that the best products start with pain.
However, the common strategic mistake here is stopping at 'pain.' Pain is an emotional hook; cost is a budget line item.
The financial gain is maximized when you immediately translate that emotional pain into the quantifiable financial outcome. You need to ask a more precise question:
'What is the single most expensive, non-vague task this user currently performs, and how many dollars/hours per month is that costing them?'
If you can't quantify the pain in dollars, you haven't identified a business problem,you've just found an inconvenience. The superior strategic lever is ensuring your promotional copy guarantees a solution to that quantified, most expensive problem, securing the sale with Guaranteed Revenue Conversion.
That's why they say you shouldn't build a perfect product. You need to start with an MVP and find product-market fit. You'll probably have to change direction a few times to create something people will actually want to pay for.